PART IV
Provence, France
AUGUST 8, 1974
The French seaport of Saint-Tropez was the landing site for Operation Dragoon during World War II, where the Allies began their drive to liberate southern France from Nazi control. A decade later the town again achieved notoriety as the setting for a film that launched the career of actress Brigitte Bardot. With its pristine beaches and skies as clear and blue as the nearby Mediterranean, it soon became a haven for European glitterati.
If there was anything the Rumsfelds were not, it was part of the glitterati. We passed through the town’s narrow, winding roads in an aging but resilient maroon Volvo.1 Our three young children were squeezed together in the backseat, and our trunk was stuffed with bags and suitcases. Our destination was Grimaud, a small, sleepy village where Ambassador André de Staercke, the distinguished dean of the North Atlantic Council, had a vacation home.
While most Americans were transfixed by the Watergate scandal we were thousands of miles away from those epic events. As the U.S. ambassador to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, I had to fly back to Washington for meetings periodically. But for the most part Joyce and I were removed from the day-to-day Watergate developments that spring and summer. We were living in Belgium, where the news on TV was in either French or Flemish, and I didn’t speak either language. Two of our children were in neighborhood Belgian schools, and I couldn’t even read their report cards. We received English newspapers, of course—the International Herald Tribune and some British papers—but we weren’t able to keep up to speed with events in Washington as one would expect today with the internet and cable TV.
Instead, during that period I had been deeply involved in helping alleviate a dispute teetering on the verge of war between two of our NATO allies, Turkey and Greece, over the island of Cyprus. Every once in a while I would turn on the local television and see pictures of President Nixon and sometimes hear an announcer say recognizable names like “Hahl-dah-mann” and “Err-leek-mann” in a thick accent. I didn’t need to speak Flemish to know that what they were describing wasn’t good.
But that was half a world away. And when tensions lessened over Cyprus, I welcomed the chance for some time away from official business with my family. En route to Grimaud, Joyce purchased a copy of the International Herald Tribune. She was so absorbed in it that I noticed she wasn’t paying the slightest attention to the picturesque countryside along the French coast.
“Don,” she finally said, with a tone of unusual insistence, “I think you should stop and read this.”
I knew that what had caught Joyce’s attention had to be something to do with Watergate, but we didn’t talk about those problems in the car, because mentions of the scandal seemed to bother our seven-year-old son, Nick, who had met Nixon several times. I had taken Nick with me on my last visit with the President in the Oval Office before leaving for NATO headquarters in Belgium. Having the undivided attention of our nation’s commander in chief—who allowed Nick to sit in his chair—had left a strong impression on him. So Joyce and I avoided discussing accusations against the President when Nick was within earshot.
I was not all that eager to learn the bad news, either, so I kept driving until we reached a beach where our kids could go swimming. I took Nick’s hand and walked with him across the white sand. As our son saw for the first time what passed for typical swim attire for women on a Mediterranean beach, his expression was one of amazed innocence. He had not seen anything like that along the shores of Lake Michigan. It was another reminder that the Rumsfelds were a long way from home.
Eventually, I sat down on the sand and turned my attention to the newspaper. President Nixon, the reports said, might be close to resigning. Despite his deteriorating political and legal situation, I never thought he’d actually have to surrender the office. I thought at worst he might be forced to accept a reduced presidency with less influence. Knowing the tenacious Richard M. Nixon, I found it hard to envision him giving up. If the news stories were accurate, however, it seemed that my friend from my days in the Congress, Vice President Gerald R. Ford, could become president of the United States.
Early that evening we arrived at Ambassador de Staercke’s house. De Staercke had assembled an eclectic group for dinner, including the Belgian ambassador to the United Kingdom, Baron Robert Rothschild, and Brigitte Bardot’s business manager. While the gravity of the situation in Washington, D.C., had become clearer to Joyce and me, the European dinner guests were surprised by the Herald Tribune’s assessment that the situation might be coming to a head. To the Europeans, Watergate seemed a relatively minor problem. Even Nixon’s secret tapings in the White House were shrugged off as not particularly unusual.
My secretary at NATO headquarters in Brussels, Leona Goodell, telephoned de Staercke’s house to tell me that an aide from Vice President Ford’s office was trying to reach me, and shortly thereafter his call came through. The Grimaud telephone switchboard was not used to receiving calls from the White House, and our dinner companions began to appreciate the seriousness of the matter. The Vice President’s aide made it clear that Ford wanted me to fly back to Washington at once. We all stayed up and listened to President Nixon’s dramatic remarks to the nation. “I have never been a quitter,” the President said solemnly. Then Richard Nixon did exactly that, announcing that he would resign his office at noon the very next day. The man who had spent much of his adult life in pursuit of the White House was suddenly, and quite unexpectedly, returning to his home in San Clemente, California.
CHAPTER 7
The familiar portrait of Richard Milhous Nixon is of a bitter, haunted figure who became the first American president to resign. I worked for a notably different Richard Nixon, conferring with him dozens of times as a member of his cabinet and periodically in smaller meetings. Nixon had serious failings, which became all too evident when his secret tapes were revealed. But I knew him to be a thoughtful, brilliant man—certainly one of the brightest presidents I observed. He was indeed a paradox who managed to reach the apex of power and then came crashing down, which I suppose is why decades later so many Americans still find him fascinating.
By 1968, during my third term in Congress, Richard M. Nixon was on the road to an improbable political comeback. His second presidential bid took place during one of the more tumultuous years in modern American history—a year punctuated by the escalating debate over Vietnam. The Tet Offensive, which had sealed the fate of President Johnson, accelerated the nearly continuous protests outside the gates of the White House. Marchers were routinely chanting things like “Hey! Hey! LBJ! How many kids did you kill today?!” There were so many protests, in fact, that the President had difficulty leaving the White House. That year saw 16,592 Americans killed in the war—the highest number of any year of that conflict.
Our country was rocked by violence and heartbreak. On April 4, 1968, Martin Luther King, Jr., the man in whom so many Americans had placed their hopes, was assassinated in Memphis, Tennessee. Joyce and I were in Florida with our family when we heard the news and flew back to Washington immediately. His death sparked an ugly backlash. Things were so tense that we had to show identification to National Guardsmen before they would let us cross the bridge from National Airport in Virginia into Washington, D.C. As we drove into the nation’s capital, we saw rioting in the streets, with buildings and cars set on fire. The next school day the city decided to keep the public schools open, leaving us with the indelible image of our twelve-year-old daughter, Valerie, serving as a school safety monitor on one corner of the street while National Guardsmen with guns at the ready stood watch on the others.
That June, Senator Robert F. Kennedy was assassinated in Los Angeles, just after winning the California Democratic presidential primary. His death, along with King’s, stirred up the still vivid memories of his brother’s assassination. The succession of murders, combined with a war with mounting casualties and the frequent and often violent demonstrations in Washington and around the nation, gave many of us a palpable sense that the country could be spiraling out of control.
Amid anger and protest, Nixon offered himself as a source of reassurance and stability. For voters it was a welcome change from the anguished presidency of Lyndon Johnson. But because he had been defeated in two high-profile elections during the past decade, he had to battle the impression that he was a loser.
When Nixon’s law partner and close associate, John Mitchell, asked me to head up the Nixon campaign in Illinois I declined, telling him I wanted to watch the race for a bit. It seemed to me that Nixon had spent much of his adult life getting ready to do something but not actually doing much besides running for the next office and serving in the standby role as vice president for eight years. As the campaign developed I was increasingly impressed by his steadiness and focus. Eventually, I agreed to be an assistant floor leader for Nixon at the 1968 Republican convention in Miami, and then as a surrogate speaker for him in the presidential election.
On the third day of the convention Mitchell, by then Nixon’s campaign manager, sent me a note asking that I attend a meeting in Nixon’s suite at the Hilton Plaza Hotel to discuss his vice presidential selection. The private gathering, with most of the leading figures of the Republican Party, would start immediately after the balloting for president was concluded. It was an unexpected invitation for a thirty-six-year-old congressman who did not know the candidate well, and in fact had been slow to support him, but I accepted with interest.1
After Nixon’s nomination, which ran late into the evening, I drove to the Hilton and made my way to his suite. Twenty-one people were gathered there, including such Republican luminaries as former Governor Thomas Dewey of New York, the 1944 and 1948 Republican presidential candidate; Senator Strom Thurmond of South Carolina, the Dixiecrat’s presidential candidate in 1948; and Senator Barry Goldwater of Arizona, seemingly well recovered from his 1964 defeat. I was the youngest and without question the least experienced person in the room.
Nixon soon arrived and shook hands with everyone. Never one for small talk, his greetings went rather quickly. Nixon seemed quite energetic despite the late hour. He sat in a swivel chair toward one end of the room. The rest of us were seated in an oblong circle.2 Nixon leaned back in his chair and extended his feet onto the edge of a coffee table.
I was impressed with how he handled himself as he held forth—he was businesslike and authoritative. He started off by giving his vision of the coming campaign, which he expected to be another close one. In considering possible vice presidential candidates, Nixon pointedly said he would not do what John F. Kennedy did in 1960 by picking Lyndon Johnson. I took that to mean he didn’t want a running mate who was a regional candidate chosen to help the ticket carry a particular state. Instead, Nixon said he wanted someone with broader appeal. I assumed he wanted to set aside individuals with close ties to the party’s left or right wings.
“I don’t want to select someone who will have the effect of dividing this party,” Nixon said in his baritone voice.3 From time to time he fiddled with his watchband as he spoke. He asked us to indicate who we believed would run best in our part of the country.4“Now let’s go around the room,” he said. He first looked to Congressman Sam Devine of Ohio, sitting to my immediate left. “Sam, start it off,” Nixon said.
I figured Devine would talk for a while to give me a chance to collect my thoughts. No such luck. Sam said he had responded to a written request from Nixon with his choice of a running mate—and that he had nothing further to add. Then Nixon and the room full of Republican luminaries turned to the next person in line. “Don, what do you think?” Nixon asked. I barely knew most of the Republican bigwigs in the room, including Nixon, but now it was my turn.
I had something of a problem, as Nixon seemed to have just ruled out some of the people I thought would run best in my area in Illinois, most of whom were identified as being toward the left of the party: Charles Percy, Nelson Rockefeller, and John Lindsay. I had opposed Rockefeller as a presidential candidate that year, but as a vice presidential candidate I thought he might bring some strength to the ticket in places like Cook County. The Republican Party was still recovering from 1964, and I felt our local candidates would have a better chance to win in 1968 if we broadened the GOP base. I also thought it would be useful to have a vice presidential candidate who could help the party make inroads in the northern, industrial, urban, and particularly the suburban areas. A candidate who would demonstrate an interest in the problems that were of concern to people in America’s cities—education, crime, drugs, and the enduring racial divisions—might attract more independent-leaning voters. I said that Senator Charles Percy in particular would be helpful in my home state, which promised to be a bellwether. I then went on to say that I thought it would be a mistake to pick a candidate from below the Mason-Dixon Line. The South was still polarized, and I thought that it might send an unfortunate message that Republicans were not supportive of civil rights. I said this knowing that one of the most prominent Southerners in the party, Strom Thurmond, was sitting only a few feet away.*
On several occasions during the discussion, Nixon would ask, “What about Volpe?” or “What about Agnew?” John Volpe was the governor of Massachusetts. Spiro T. Agnew was the recently elected governor of Maryland. Nobody seemed to know much about either of them. But as the discussion went on, it occurred to me that Nixon very likely had all but made up his mind to select either Volpe or Agnew before any of us had arrived.5
It was nearly five o’clock in the morning when the meeting finally ended. As I headed out, I passed Nixon, who was standing alone. He shook my hand. Then he said something I wasn’t expecting.
“You’ve got an easy district,” he observed. “I’d like to have you come with me [on the campaign trail], and I want to talk to you about it.” I told Nixon I was willing to do what I could to help. I also pressed the case against picking a Southern candidate for vice president.
Nixon thought for a moment. “Don, I’m afraid we’re all going to have to give a little on this one,” he said.6
When I got back to my hotel room near dawn, Joyce, typically, got right to the point. “Well, who is it?” she asked.
“You won’t believe it,” I replied. I told her it looked to me that it would be Volpe or Agnew with an outside possibility of Senator Mark Hatfield of Oregon. Hatfield was a friend, and of the three the one I would have preferred. He had been suggested by the Reverend Billy Graham. Joyce thought for a moment and then, with a puzzled look, asked the question that the entire world would soon echo: “Agnew?”
When Nixon announced Governor Agnew’s selection the following day, he said he had based his decision on three criteria. First, Nixon claimed, Agnew was qualified to become president. Second, he said Agnew would be a good campaigner; and third, if they got elected Agnew would be able to manage domestic policy.7 To my knowledge, Agnew was not particularly noted for those qualities. More than anything Nixon seemed pleased that he had selected someone so unexpected, catching everyone off guard. And indeed the choice of Agnew was so startling that it stunned even Agnew.8
Though I remained impressed with Nixon, I found his selection process disappointing. The weakness of his vice presidential choice eventually caused great problems for him down the road. Nixon’s real criterion did not seem to be competence or experience but rather finding someone who did not elicit opposition from any quarter. His intent may have been to preempt criticism, but if so, it was shortsighted. That no one spoke against Agnew was not an indicator that he had no flaws, but rather that no one yet knew of his shortcomings.
In late August, the Democrats held their nominating convention in Chicago. The Nixon team asked me, as the only local Republican congressman representing part of Chicago, to join what they called the “Republican listening post.” The plan was to be ready to exploit in the media whatever openings the Democrats might offer.* We were located at the Chicago Conrad Hilton Hotel. Our group consisted of a young Nixon speechwriter and future Pulitzer Prize–winning columnist, Bill Safire, another top speechwriter and talented rising star named Pat Buchanan, Republican Governor John Love of Colorado, and me.
As it turned out, we didn’t have to do much, if any, truth squadding. The Democrats suffered through one of the worst conventions in modern history. Inside the convention hall there were heated debates over the Vietnam War and attempts to cut off the microphones of some of the speakers. Outside, thousands of demonstrators gathered in protest marches—including a large crowd in Grant Park across the street from our hotel. From our windows we could see demonstrators holding candles or carrying signs protesting President Johnson and the Vietnam War. Joyce came into the city to join us, and we watched from our hotel room. After a while we decided to go down and see what was happening up close. Joyce and I talked a reluctant Governor Love, a dignified man from an earlier generation, into going into Grant Park with us.
The majority of protesters were not anarchists, revolutionaries, or violent. Most were young, not much older than our eldest daughter. I understood their point of view, since I had my own concerns about the conduct of the war. But there were troublemakers sprinkled among the groups that were looking to incite a showdown with the police.
Later that night, when we were back in the hotel, Joyce and I looked out of the windows again. The demonstration began to take a less peaceful turn. Some in the crowd started to attack the police, hoping to provoke a violent confrontation that would garner press attention. The vastly outnumbered Chicago police tried to keep the crowd under control. Finally, the police deployed tear gas. The gas filled the lobby of the Hilton and eventually made its way through some lower floors. As the situation grew more tense, some officers took tougher actions. Police in robin egg blue helmets charged into the demonstrators, wielding night sticks and dragging some of the troublemakers to police vans. Other officers pinned people against the wall of the Conrad Hilton and, in the process of subduing them, some hotel windows were broken.9 The agitators in the crowd responded with more violence.
As the rioting continued, members of our listening post checked in with Richard Nixon and reported on what was happening. The unfolding disaster in Chicago understandably captured his attention. He asked a number of questions and expressed dismay at the level of violence. Like many politicians, Nixon was interested in gathering information about his political opponents—a few years later, of course, the country would find out just how interested.
The harmful aftereffects of the chaos in Chicago lingered for months. It cast an unwelcome shadow on the Democratic convention and on Hubert Humphrey’s presidential campaign. What the country saw on television was ugly, and the political fallout was substantial. What I witnessed left a painful memory and a lingering sense of sorrow about what had happened in Chicago, one of America’s great cities and my hometown.
I was struck by the fact that Nixon was running against a Democratic opponent who in many ways was his opposite. Aptly labeled “the happy warrior,” Humphrey was upbeat and engaging. He was also tough. Reciting the litany of previous incarnations of a new Nixon persona in 1952, 1956, 1960, and 1962, Humphrey noted, “Now, I read about the new Nixon of 1968. Ladies and gentlemen. Anyone who’s had his political face lifted so many times can’t be very new.”10 I had a feeling a Humphrey-Nixon debate would not help our side.
The Nixon campaign agreed—the candidate had not forgotten his difficulties debating John F. Kennedy in 1960. That September, Bryce Harlow, a friend and well-known Washington figure, came to my congressional office. Harlow was working hard on the Nixon campaign. He told me that Nixon did not want to give Humphrey the chance to debate and to untether himself from the unpopular Johnson. Furthermore, Democrats in Congress, at Humphrey’s and LBJ’s urging, were proposing to suspend the equal time provisions so that Governor George Wallace would be able to participate without any other third-party candidates. Wallace, a segregationist candidate from Alabama, was running for president as an independent. His candidacy promised to siphon support from Nixon in the south, and like Humphrey he was quick and entertaining in a debate format. Harlow told me Nixon was disinclined to give Wallace any airtime and that he considered it unfair for just one third-party candidate to be included.
Harlow asked me to help stop the suspension of the equal-time provisions that would have allowed for the three-way debate. I thought we had substantial common interests on the issue: I agreed with Harlow’s political assessment that a three-way debate was the worst scenario for Nixon, and I disapproved of the Democrats’ last-minute attempt to jury-rig the rules. I also thought this might be an opportunity for my group in Congress to get some attention for the issues we wanted to advance. “Rumsfeld’s Raiders” were pushing a reform package that included measures popular with the public, such as campaign finance reform and a ban on the use of political contributions for personal enrichment.
As Harlow set himself up in Ford’s minority leader office, just off the House chamber, we crafted a campaign of legislative maneuvers to stall the suspension of equal-time provisions. Any member could stop business in the House of Representatives by requiring the clerk to call the roll in order to have a majority of members (a quorum) present. So before the debate legislation came up for a vote, one of us would ask for a quorum call and the rest of us would work to ensure that there were never enough members present on the House floor for debate or votes to continue. From noon on October 8 until well into the next day our group arranged for thirty-three consecutive intentionally unsuccessful quorum calls.
This was not well received by the Democratic Speaker of the House, John McCormack. He threatened to send out the Capitol police force to physically round up members and lock them in the chamber. At one point, Congressman John Anderson of Illinois was barred from leaving the House floor—leading to a bizarre scene in which a member of Congress was pounding on the doors of the House chamber, shouting that he was being held hostage by the Speaker.
In addition to the repeated calls for a quorum, we also managed to arrange votes on a series of amendments to the legislation that dragged things out even further. LBJ must not have been pleased. We were outmaneuvering the legislative master himself.
Before we were done, we kept the House in session all night in what became the longest continuous session of the U.S. House of Representatives since the battle over the Missouri Compromise of 1820. Some of the tradition-conscious Republican leadership considered our efforts unseemly, but Minority Leader Gerald Ford stood apart and cheered us on. Our effort was dubbed “The Longest Night.”
Our goal was to delay the bill because we knew we did not have the votes to defeat it. We were trying to hold out for two days so Senate Republicans could make a similar effort and prevent the bill from being voted on before Congress was set to adjourn on October twelfth. It worked. The bill was shelved indefinitely. Humphrey and Nixon never debated, nor did Governor George Wallace. Our efforts caught Nixon’s attention, and the candidate let it be known that he was grateful for our assistance.
A week later, Nixon invited me to accompany him on a campaign swing through the South and Midwest, where I got to know him a bit better.11 Despite his somber, pensive, and businesslike demeanor, Nixon showed himself to be an engaging stump speaker. He worked at it, meticulously preparing his notes beforehand. At one point he became so involved in his speech that he nearly fell off the crate he was standing on.
Toward the end of one flight, Nixon called me into his private compartment. Then fifty-five, his hair, touched with gray, was receding. He got right down to the business of the campaign and asked me where I was scheduled to speak over the closing weeks. I told him I was going to New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania.
“That’s good,” he said, putting on his master political strategist hat. “Stay out of Illinois.” Though he might have been elected president in 1960 if Illinois had tilted to him over Kennedy, Nixon seemed to think he would win the state this time.
On the next leg of our trip we had a longer conversation.12 Nixon was relaxed as we spoke. He seemed to want to know more about me—he asked me if I smoked, and I told him I did smoke a pipe. He expressed irritation at the campaign and what he considered to be Humphrey’s attempts to characterize him as a racist. “If I did that to Humphrey I’d never hear the end of it in the press,” Nixon mused. “Do you think I should debate him?”
“No, I don’t,” I replied.
He told me his advisers were telling him to hit Humphrey harder in his speeches. I told him I thought he was doing fine. Humphrey was a likable character, and I didn’t think that being harsh to him would be a good strategy. Later Nixon received kudos in the press for appearing on the popular entertainment show Laugh-In—something of a precursor to Saturday Night Live—and saying the show’s catch phrase, “Sock it to me!” The fact that Nixon was willing to appear on the show demonstrated to many of his critics that he was able to take himself less seriously and have a little fun.
As Nixon had predicted, the election was close—his victory margin was less than 1 percentage point, making the 1968 presidential election one of the tightest in American history. Richard Nixon had risen from the political grave.